A GHOST OF HIMSELF | Evan | The Sin of Darkness

He still remembered. He remembered those endless first days. At first it was all a tightly bound whirlpool of color, light, and sound — he could distinguish nothing but the piercing agony that cut across his skin from head to toe. Later, when the madness of the mind receded, only the torture of the body remained. Then Evan finally understood: it had been an explosion, and the pain came from terrible burns that split his skin open like erupting volcanoes. Somewhere in those hours, his brain — damaged either by the blast itself or the poisonous fumes — grasped for the first time that Evan could no longer see himself.

At once he blamed it on hallucination, or perhaps on the darkness of the ruined laboratory. But when he managed to rise to his feet, the world grew treacherous in unexpected ways. He kept knocking over glassware, missing the handles of drawers, striking his knee against the table. The borders of his own body seemed just blurred, indistinct — at least until he tried to tend to his wounds.

Slowly the world returned, and with it came the crushing awareness of his invisibility. Treating his burns had to be done by touch alone. He moved as though guided by the voice of his father, recalling how the man once helped housewives scalded by pots of bursting oil in their kitchens. For the first time Evan felt as if he did not exist at all — physically absent, and in fleeting moments that haunted him constantly, mentally as well. It was knowledge, calculation, and memory of who he had once been that seemed to act in his place.

He had to learn how to live as he was. At first it was a struggle simply to grasp his own boundaries — his body felt strange, vast, unwieldy. He preferred working in gloves, if only to see the outlines of his fingers. To look at his bodyless reflection, or at clothes draped on nothing, was unbearable. Mirrors quickly disappeared from his small apartment, and those fixed to the walls were covered with heavy cloth.

He soon mastered the art of being invisible. He treated his clothing with the same compound that had transformed him, learning to move almost soundlessly, to avoid brushing against strangers, to make no noise. To speak to anyone was dangerous — what would he find but a priest attempting to drive him out like some demon, some spawn of hell? He became an outcast, a truly nonexistent recluse.

He communicated by letters, assigning tasks to his secretary, the fair-haired young Mr. Eugene Holloway, to whom he left notes or spoke through a closed door like a criminal in hiding. At the university they merely decided the professor had gone mad at last, lost all appetite for society, and fallen wholly into his scientific experiments. Yet Evan continued to write books, continued to prepare lectures for others to deliver, and so no one hurried to dismiss him. He remained, in his strange way, a pillar of his department.

Now and then Mr. Holloway would enter the laboratory while Evan was present. In those moments Evan froze, like a mouse caught in the stare of a street cat, praying with all his soul to remain unseen.

He was haunted by a deep shame. A profound loneliness. It had become a torture that sprawled months and months since the explosion stole him from the world and himself.

Once Evan had taken his solitude for a kind of paradise; he had cherished the ordered quiet of his rooms and the steady companionship of experiments. But when solitude closed on him too tightly, when it swallowed him whole and bestowed upon him the terrible benediction of true invisibility, he learned it was a sentence rather than a refuge.

Debates and arguments, once a pleasure, were no longer possible. It became impossible even to exchange a trivial remark about the weather with Mrs. De Bury who stood on the corner near his lodging, trading pastry and sourdough bread. Provisions were left at his door as though he were a leper. At times it seemed easier to put an end to everything.

He clung to his experiments with a fiercer determination than before, but also with a wary care born of that torturing experience — torture of body and mind alike. His attempts to reclaim visibility were desperate and intangible, as if he were pursuing a shadow that might never solidify.

The evening was fresh but surprisingly warm for late September in London. A run of rain had given the city a brief reprieve, withdrawing the heavy clouds enough for moon and stars to force their way through the slow, returning pall that would soon enshroud the dim alleyways and streets in another pea-souper.

Evan seldom allowed himself a walk, yet tonight the confinements of his laboratory had pressed upon him with an unusual weight. He favoured the quieter, less frequented quarters of London, avoiding crowds and the press of pedestrians. He shunned the drizzle — the slush and spray outlined footprints and still betrayed a silhouette — and even a particularly dense fog might betray his presence. To become the talk of the town as a new ghost-story was the last thing he wanted.

Invisibility had given him a view of London denied to ordinary, visible folk. He had been witness to private, small changes in backyards and to whispers of lasting devotion. He had seen shopkeepers butcher carcasses on soiled crates wiped only with rags that had just been fished from a puddle. He had watched boys plotting, with the bright-eyed malice of adolescence, how on the morrow they would try to pilfer notes from the pockets of passersby in the squares.

Evan had always believed it was not his place to intervene. As much as he dreaded becoming a fearsome phantom haunting London’s alleys, he dreaded just as much the prospect of becoming its unseen savior.

Yet tonight promised to unsettle the very pillars of his moral foundation — and fears.

In the depths of an archway, hidden by shadow and the slow descent of fog, two young men lingered. Their faces bore the scars of drunken fights, their features swollen by cheap spirits — likely distilled in some grandfather’s shed rather than any reputable still. They whispered about their intentions, their voices strained with nervous giggles. It was clear this was their first attempt at plotting anything darker than mischief. Dignity was absent there, as were any good intentions.

Evan meant to pass by unseen, closing his eyes to a crime that might never happen — when another figure stepped into the far end of the alley. An ordinary citizen, walking home through the half-light of the city. Evan’s gaze swept over them at the same moment the whispers fell silent. The boys had found their chance.

They pressed themselves flat against the damp brick walls, absurd in their attempt to vanish — how ironic, Evan thought. As the figure drew closer, surrendering to the gloom, both youths sprang forward. One stepped into their path, the other circling behind to block retreat.

“Oi, oi,” drawled the one in front, lips curling into a leer. “Late hour for a stroll, innit? Headin’ home, are ya? Maybe we oughta see ya safe.”

The second chimed in, his voice thick with mockery. “Wrong place fer a fine soul like y’self.” His hand slipped into a pocket, producing a thin folding knife. The blade was worn to a sliver, sharpened far more times than its life could bear.

“’Course,” the first added, “our escort services don’t come free.”

“Fair price!” barked the second, grinning wide, stepping nearer from behind.

“A mutually beneficial arrangement,” the first continued, flexing the scarred knuckles of his right hand before drawing his own blade — a letter opener, polished, clearly stolen, and perhaps taken not without violence.

Evan’s jaw clenched. He wavered. To intervene would be to reveal himself; to stay silent would be to stain his conscience with the crime’s outcome.

He was no fighter. He was a man of laboratories and lecture halls, his frame untrained, his hands made for mixing chemicals and shaping words — not for blows. Yet on his side he bore the burden and gift of invisibility. The element of surprise. The power to strike as an unseen avenger.

He stepped forward toward the youth with the letter opener, who fondled the blade with a hungry gleam in his eyes, ready not only for theft but perhaps for worse.

“Well then, let’s see what ya—” His words cut short in a shriek as an unseen hand seized the back of his flimsy coat and yanked him off balance. He tumbled backward with a cry, raw and terrified.

The second boy froze.

“Jimmy, y’bloody muppet!” he howled. “Can’t keep yer fuckin’ feet under ya?!”

“Somethin’ grabbed me! Somethin’ fuckin’ grabbed me!” Jimmy gasped, eyes wide in horror as he scrambled toward the wall.

Evan lifted his gaze toward the second and advanced. The lad had yet to understand that Jimmy had not stumbled over some loose cobblestone, but had been struck down by a hand carrying more strength tonight than it had in many long months.